With no SPL football tomorrow we’re hoping for a few extra fans tomorrow at Ainslie Park for our Seniors game against Tynecastle, the ko is 2.30pm, admission is £5/£3.  The bumper programme is £1.50.

The Juniors travel to West Calder in league action, also a 2.30pm ko.  The squad is looking much stronger with Gary Bannon and Michael Moffat back in the squad.  Dawid Paterek  will start in goals and Ross Mckenzie will be pushing for a starting berth.  Sam Scott returned last week after missing all of pre-season, he’s far from fully match fit but will give 100% if selected.  Phil McKibben is still on holiday.

The Saturday Amateurs return to league action with a game at the Gyle against  Heriot Vale, Steve Malin and Iain Cartwright in scoring form.

  Mike says -

 ”Tomorrow we play our last league game for several weeks which doesn’t make the three points anymore important but will make both teams want to go into the “cup” break on a high. Like ourselves Tynecastle have started slowly but I saw them at Riccarton last Wednesday and they looked very good to me that evening. Murray and David have had a mountain of injuries to contend with but against Heriot-Watt the team had a good balance about them and deserved their two goal victory. 

 Robbie Arthur pulled the strings in midfield behind Paul Devlin and Wayne McIntosh who gave the student defence a torrid time as well as both scoring. They have pace and trickery in wide areas with Eddie Mearns and Steven McCormack while the young defence looked solid in front of the impressive John Gilbertson in goal. Tynecastle are a good side and we will have to be at our best tomorrow.

 For our part the majority of the team will have played in the corresponding fixture last August where we put in our worst performance of the season. Tynecastle overran us that day as we struggled to come to terms with our new surroundings. Our players have nothing to prove but Sam and I will be reminding them that they may be due a performance against Tynecastle at the Academy.

 Sam and I were almost certainly going with the same team for the third game in a row when a collision at training last night may have put two regulars on the side-line. One player managed to gingerly take part in the rest of training after a few minutes to recover but the other had to hobble into the changing rooms. Alex King is still a week or so away and Sean McAuley is unavailable. Given Jorge left a couple of weeks ago and we are down to the bare bones.

 There will be a few frantic phone-calls today and a couple of fitness tests tomorrow before we decide on a starting eleven. What’s certain however is that whoever runs out in a Spartans top will have to be at their very best if we are to give the pressure up on Sammy and his boys.

 I hope you come down and watch the action.”

 Mike

We are delighted to annouce two new sponsorship deals from FactoryGyms and KPMG for Season 2010/11.  Each deal is worth a four figure sum.  Factory Gym is based in Calton Road just up from the Omni Centre.  They have new state of the art facilities  and are keen to build their profile and membership in Edinburgh.  We will have their logo and name on the back of our new home strips from this Saturday’s game against Tynecastle and look forward to working together to help us both build our businesses.

KPMG are the first sponsor of our stand and their logo is now on display on the front facia of the stand. 

We’re now looking for further stand sponsors, indeed club director Dave Bryce or commercial manager Bryan Burns are always interested in speaking to new potential sponsors.

The Womens team beat Boroughmuir 3 – 1 away in the league last night to go third in the SWPL.

The Girls Under 13 team have drawn East End from Aberdenn in the last 8 of the Scottish Cup at home, the game is to be played on Saturday 25th September.

After six seasons with Spartans popular midfielder Keith Boyes has left our Juniors team.  Keith came through our under 19 team and was a mainstay in the successful Spartans team which played in the McEwans Central League where he also played as a regular in the select team which won the Scottish inter-league trophy.  Keith played for Gala Fairydean as a trialist on Saturday as he thinks through his next club.   Keith will continue to coach our top team at under 15s which is great news.

The Womens team went out of the Scottish Cup this afternoon with a 3 - 1 defeat to Hibernian.  Despite winning a number of corners in the first half we failed to convert and Hibs took the lead just after the half hour mark.  The second half was pretty even with few chances until Hibs scored a second with 15 minutes to go, before the third came in the 85th minute.  Claire Crosbie pulled one back in the last minute.

The EoS19s had a resounding 9 – 0 win over Gala Fairydean in the league, goals from Stephen McGinn 2, Andrew Sinclair 2, Alan Murray 2, James Hymers, David Stewart and Jordan Finnie.  Gala fielded three players who had played for the 1st XI against Spartans in last weeks cup tie at Gala but we started with great energy and scored after only eight minutes.  By half time we were playing some excellent free flowing football and led 7 – 0.  The second half was more subdued with gala continuing to play the game in the right manner however we added two more.  We have had a good start to the campaign with maximum points from our two games.

The Sunday Amateurs drew 2 – 2 with league leaders Newton Heath….the highlight a cracking individual effort from Daniel Chillie.